The weekly
weigh-in: I’ve shifted two more pounds. That’s two and a half stone since I
started this diet, and (probably) still under half of what I need to
lose.
Mind you, I must
question the validity of weigh-ins. On this morning’s first weigh in it looked
like I’d gained weight. So I had a shave and weighed again afterwards, and in
that time my weight had dropped by four pounds. I’ve noticed that I can get
different readings out of the scales by moving the scales to different points
on the kitchen floor.
I then spent a little while playing “Worms” – rather mindless fun, but fun
nonetheless. I can remember there being a concrete donkey in the game some
years ago, but haven’t found one lately. I wonder if it’s still there?
And then seeing how tomorrow is the smallest
member of the family’s birthday, we went to the reindeer farm as a birthday treat.
The event started rather embarrassingly: this was our first meeting with “My Boy TM ” ‘s girlfriend’s
family. The plan was we would all meet up in the car park of the reindeer farm.
We arrived, waited a bit, and sure enough the prospective in-laws arrived. And
as they pulled up, so their camper van burst into flames. Literal flames. There
was fire coming out from underneath the camper van, and when they opened the
engine compartment, it was ablaze.
Having your vehicle spontaneously combust
isn’t something that you expect, so there was a worrying few seconds before the
gravity of the situation was realised. But the on-board fire extinguisher did
the trick, and the reindeer farm staff were soon on hand with a fire
extinguisher too.
What a way to meet someone (!)
With fires extinguished we made our way
inside. We started with Santa’s grotto. It was done up really well, and Santa
was really good. Littlun got a present well worth the cost of two people’s
entrance tickets. And then we moved on to the animals. Lots of reindeer,
obviously, and meerkats, wallabies, llamas, donkeys, ducklings, emus, pigs,
goats, sheep, rabbits, guinea-pigs. There was a snow-blower which periodically
covered passers-by in fake snow (foam).
And you got to feed the animals with carrots. Personally I think it’s a bit of
a cheek charging people to feed your own animals, but it was something which
was obviously popular with the punters. Getting spat on by the llamas wasn’t
quite so popular, but as a spectator I found it to be far more entertaining
watching people getting spat at that it was watching donkeys eating carrots.
I had no idea that the reindeer farm even
existed: I shall certainly go back whenever there’s any other events going on.
As always there’s an album of photos of the event on
Facebook.
Once home we borrowed Fudge and went for a
walk to the home brew shop. We could have driven, but walking is good exercise.
For us and for Fudge. We took rather a tortuous route there, but we eventually
found how to cross the train tracks and get round the high fences. I thought
the journey would take forty minutes: it took fifty-five. Mind you, coming home
was quicker. We took virtually a straight line all the way. By the time we’d
dropped Fudge off at the Fudgery and got home we’d been walking for two hours.
That took care of six hundred and seventy four calories.
That sounds a lot, but wasn’t quite as many
calories as was in all that I’d eaten out of the smashing packed lunch that
Cheryl had made for me today. In fact the walk only shifted sixty per cent of
the calories that were in lunch. Which is exactly where my diets have gone
wrong in the past – underestimating the calorie content of food, and
overestimating the efficacy of exercise.
Being Saturday night, it was film night. We
made or way to Chris’s where we had a Narnia double bill First of all “Prince Caspian”, and then “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader”. Both
excellent films. I quite like this Saturday films night lark. I just need not
to scoff crisps and sweeties whilst I’m there…
